The Morphological Expression of Case In¨Ovdalian
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The Morphological Expression of Case in Ovdalian¨ ∗ Peter Svenonius CASTL, University of Tromsø May 16, 2014 Abstract The purpose of this paper is to document and describe the case system of the most conservative variety of Ovdalian¨ still spoken (‘Traditional Ovdalian,’¨ TO).¨ The system is compared with the four-case system of Old Swedish (OS) and the three-case system of Classical Ovdalian¨ (CO)¨ described by Levander (1909). I argue that TO¨ distinguishes three cases, but in full noun phrases, only manifests a two-case system, where Dative case is opposed to a Direct case comprising nominative and accusative functions. Pronouns generally show a different alignment, distinguishing nominative from objective cases. I focus on the nominal suffixes, which distinguish gender, number, definiteness, and case, as well as declension class. I argue that TO¨ nouns have only one suffix, where OS had three, and CO¨ was in transition between two suffixes and one. I examine the patterns of syncretism, and suggest that some can be explained in terms of markedness cooccurrence restrictions, but not others. I also briefly discuss adnominal modifiers (determiners and adjectives). 1 Introduction Following the terminology adopted in Garbacz (2010) (which builds in turn on Helgander 1996 and other work), I will refer to the variety documented in detail by Levander (1909) as ‘Classical’ Ovdalian.¨ According to Levander (1925:37– 43), the most important distinguishing characteristics of Ovdalian¨ were present by the beginning of the 17th century, and possibly earlier. However, significant changes took place in the 20th century. Following Garbacz (2010:34), a conserva- tive variety of Ovdalian¨ spoken by a generation born after about 1920 but before 1950 can be called Traditional Ovdalian.¨ Most speakers today speak another variety, which is sometimes called ‘Younger’ Ovdalian¨ or ‘Modern’ Ovdalian.¨ 1 ∗The endonym is (¨ov)dalska; Elfdalian, Ovdalian¨ , and Oevdalian have been variously used in works published in English. Thanks to Lars Steensland, NORMS, and Gerda Werf and Ulum Dalska and the other people of Alvdalen¨ for making the fieldwork possible and enjoyable. Thanks to Henrik Rosenkvist, Kristine Bentzen, and especially Piotr Garbacz for invaluable assistance during and after fieldwork. Lars Steensland, Piotr Garbacz, and an anonymous reviewer made many valuable suggestions and pointed out many errors in an earlier version, which I have endeavored to correct, but flaws no doubt remain, despite their efforts. 1According to a survey conducted in 2008 by G¨osta Larsson, Ulla Welin, and Bengt Welin of the Ulum Dalska organization, approximately 2,500 people speak one variety or another of the language. 1 The Traditional Ovdalian¨ case system has not, to my knowledge, been sys- tematically documented or described before. I describe it here and compare it to that of Classical Ovdalian.¨ I also locate both systems in the typological context of case systems cross-linguistically. Traditional Ovdalian¨ manifests a nominative-objective distinction in the pronominal system, but a direct-dative distinction on full nouns. Thus the language as a whole distinguishes three distinct syntactic case contexts, nominative, accusative, and dative, but the morphology of lexical noun phrases (including their determiners and modifiers) distinguishes at most two, direct versus dative. The Traditional Ovdalian¨ system reported here has been established mainly on the basis of a series of interviews and data elicitation sessions with speakers born before 1950 conducted by myself and associates in the NORMS project in 2007.2 Additional material was collected in follow-up expeditions by Piotr Garbacz and myself. In addition, the book Kunundsin kumb written by Hjalmar Larsson, a native speaker (listed in references under Larsson 1985; henceforth KK ). When quoting material from KK, I preserve the original spelling. For other material I conform to the standardized orthography established in 2005, except where deviations are phonologically significant and where otherwise noted.3 The symbol hDi represents a voiced interdental fricative /D/ in Classical Ovdalian,¨ wtih somewhat variable realization in different dialects of Traditional Ovdalian.¨ Additional sources are cited where used.4 I focus on full lexical nouns, discussing pronouns briefly in §2.2. The sys- tem of full lexical nouns shows two case forms in all three genders, in definite and plural forms, as well as some indefinite singular forms, see below. This is illustrated for the masculine noun est ‘horse’ in (1). (1) Masculine est ‘horse’ Singular Plural Indefinite Definite Direct est estn ester Dative est estem estum Descriptively, there are three significant differences between this system of noun inflection and the one described in Akerberg˚ (2000) and Dahl and Koptjevskaja- Tamm (2006). One is the absence of distinctions between the nominative and ac- cusative cases in lexical nouns (compare Classical Ovdalian¨ ester (Nom) vs. esta (Acc) ‘horses’ in the indefinite plural, and est¨ar (Nom) vs. esta˛ (Acc) in the def- inite plural, Levander 1909:11–12). The standard term for a single case which is used for both subjects and objects is Direct Case (Blake 2001, Haspelmath 2009), and I will use that term here. The second difference is the loss of definiteness distinctions in most plurals 2See http://norms.uit.no/ for information on the NORMS project. 3For example, Levander marks nasality with a hook on all nasal vowels, even where it is predictable (before nasal stops), whereas the standardized orthography marks nasality only when a nasal vowel is not followed by m or n, and that is the practice here, except for material quoted from KK, where nasality appears to be marked inconsistently. 4I have benefitted from valuable reference materials for Ovdalian,¨ including a dictionary by Lars Steensland (2006) and a grammar by Bengt Akerberg˚ (2012). The latter only came out after this paper was completed, but I was able to consult earlier versions such as Akerberg˚ (2000). As befits their function as reference works, these grammars are deliberately conserva- tive, and I have not relied on them as evidence concerning how dative case is manifested in Traditional Ovdalian.¨ 2 (again, compare the Classical Ovdalian¨ forms mentioned above: ester (Indef) vs. est¨ar (Def) in the nominative, and esta (Indef) vs. esta˛ (Def) in the ac- cusative). However, unlike the merger of the nominative and accusative, this is only true for some classes of noun. For example, a neuter noun like tak ‘roof’ shows a distinction between the definite and indefinite forms of the ‘direct case’ plural. (2) Neuter tak ‘roof’ Singular Plural Indefinite Definite Indefinite Definite Direct tak tatjeD tak tatje˛ Dative tak tatji˛ takum takum These two changes are likely to be related, since loss of distinct nominative and accusative forms eliminated part of the paradigm in which definite and in- definite forms were distinguished in the plural (the dative definite and indefinite plurals were already identical in Classical Ovdalian).¨ 5 The third difference in this system is the loss of several distinctly dative suffixes in the indefinite singular, with the result that Direct and Dative cases are often indistinct in the indefinite singular. This can be seen in the paradigms for est ‘horse’ and tak ‘roof’ in (1)–(2) above, as well as for the feminine noun fika ‘fig’ in (3) below.6 (3) Feminine fika ‘fig’ Singular Plural Indefinite Definite Direct fika fika˛ fikur Dative fika fikun fikum Compare Classical Ovdalian¨ indefinite singular dative forms este ‘horse,’ tatji ‘roof,’ and fik˚a ‘fig’ (Levander 1909:11–12, 29–30, 40–41). Another interesting property in the system is a mismatch between the case system for lexical nouns and the case system for pronouns. First and second per- son pronouns, as well as plural pronouns, also make a two-case distinction, but syncretize accusative with dative rather than with nominative. The mismatch can be illustrated in the following way. (4) pronoun (1pl) lexical noun (str. m pl) Nom wi˛D kaller Nom Acc uoss kaller Acc Dat uoss kallum Dat ‘we/us’ ‘men’ A similar situation is observed in Norwegian dialects which preserve the dative. For example, Halsa (Nordmøre) dialect as described by Afarli˚ and Fjøsne (2012) distinguishes nominative from accusative/dative in parts of the pronominal sys- 5Levander (1909:13, n. 2) observes that older speakers occasionally have a distinct da- tive definite plural -ume, but this is sufficiently marginal that he does not include it in his paradigms. 6I deliberately illustrate with a noun which is low in frequency in daily discourse. In elicitation sessions, I tested low as well as high frequency nouns to control for the possibility that case forms for certain high frequency nouns might be exceptional. 3 tem, but dative from nominative/accusative in some third person pronouns and on definite-marked lexical nouns, as indicated in (5). (5) pronoun (1pl) lexical noun (str. f sg) Nom me katt˚a Nom Acc ˚ass katt˚a Acc Dat ˚ass katt˚ainn Dat ‘we/us’ ‘the cat’ This kind of situation can be found in other case alignment systems. In ergative systems, the subject of an intransitive (S) shows the same case as the object of a transitive (O), distinct from the ergative case of the subject of a transitive verb (A), while in accusative systems S and A pattern together, distinct from O. Quite commonly, pronouns, and especially first and second person pronouns, show accusative alignment while full nouns show ergative alignment (Silver- stein 1976, Dixon 1994). This is illustrated below with Dyirbal, an Australian language (Dixon 1972:42, 50). (6) pronoun (1pl) lexical noun (Class I sg) A (Nom) Nanad%i yaóa-Ngu A(Erg) S (Nom) Nanad%i yaóa S (Abs) O (Acc) Nanad%i-na yaóa O (Abs) ‘we/us’ ‘man’ Another similar pattern is the one seen in Bonan (Mongolic; Baerman 2009:226), where pronouns syncretize dative with accusative, while full nouns have a dis- tinct dative, but have an accusative which is indistinct from the genitive.